No More Excuses for Not Becoming Energy Efficiency

I’ve been seeing blogs and other news articles at the national level make statements that we have exhausted our efforts on being more energy efficient as a country, that most businesses have addressed all the low hanging fruit. That is so not true. Even our building which has been Energy Star certified for 5 years now we have been working on an energy reduction plan for 2014 – 2015 and we have again learned that we can probably reduce our energy usage by at least another 50…% because of technological advances in lighting since 5-6 years ago and other low hanging, low cost upgrades. It is not something you can say you have accomplished and there is no more room for improvement – that is why you need someone to focus on this. Waste reduction is the same situation. Now solar has become very reasonably priced so there is even a good chance that we could generate on-site the remaining energy that we may need and become a net zero electric usage building. Why would a business not want to add that money that is paid for utilities and waste right to their bottom line? I’ve also been in several presentations by our utility companies and have heard them say that commercial building owners in Muskegon have not taken advantage of the business solution incentives like in our neighboring counties. So I challenge all building owners/managers everywhere in West Michigan to join the Battle of the Buildings and let’s get it done – there are no excuses. http://www.usgbcwm.org/battle.php